


Edition 1: The Raider Rule Book

by PaladinCarter



Series: Scav Magazine [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Alcohol Abuse, Canon-Typical Violence, Explicit Language, F/M, Fluff, Nuka World, Slow Burn, Smoking, Smut, Spoilers, fallout spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 00:33:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9148834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaladinCarter/pseuds/PaladinCarter
Summary: Some rules for the road in Nuka World as told by Mason and complained about by Mags.(This is just a pet project while I take a short break from Blind Betrayal. Enjoy~ ♥)





	1. Rule 1: Don't Be Weak

I've said it before and I'll say it again: women are weak. They bleed so easily and their feelings are dainty like little flowers. You can't even say a full sentence without them crying like little children. Hell, even the cage mutts have better training than most of the raider girls in Nuka World. Hell, I know that I got girls in the pack, but they're only part of the show cuz I like lookin' at 'em. And just to give credit where credit is due, some of them are okay shots. _Okay_.   
  
There's a reason that I got mad when Porter Gage told me that a woman was running through the gauntlet and had made it half-way through the damn thing. Don't get me wrong, I like seeing a little ass hanging around the place. But the whole gauntlet thing was supposed to be the audition for the new Overboss, and I couldn't let a woman give me orders. No, I never did like the idea of a woman leading Nuka World. They're too gullible. The only woman that I think I was even slightly ever okay with running any kind of show was Mags, and that's because she was smart and not entirely off her fucking rocker. The point is, a girl would do what Gage told them to do because the man always had a way with girls in the gangs. Gage would be boss without being boss, see?  
  
I was watching her from the stands when she got into the arena and god damn, she looked like she'd never picked up a gun in her life. She was so tiny that I was completely sure that she couldn't have been more than five feet tall. And I knew as soon as I looked at her hands that she was definitely gonna be dead within the minute. She was holding a fucking _squirt gun_ in them. But I could see a certain fire in her eyes and I thought that maybe it was gonna be fun to watch. That maybe, just maybe, she'd end up being some kind of funny lady from the Commonwealth with a few jokes banging around in there. I even considered asking Colter not to kill her just so I could keep her around the den to entertain the boys. Nah, that would have deprived them of a good show if – no, when – Colter got the upper hand on her and squished her like a bug.  
  
One pleasant little number I noticed was that she had a baseball bat strapped to her leg that was decorated up nice and pretty with blood-stained razor wire and some kind of blue paint. I had to give kudos to her. Not many vics were ever brave enough to run around with a baseball bat. How the hell she managed to make it past anything in the gauntlet was far beyond me; the damn turrets alone should have taken her out the second she stepped foot in the fucking thing. But no, she was standing right there with the squirt gun in one hand while her other gripped the base of the bat. While I was sure that she was going to die – all of them usually did – I was also excited to see what kind of show she would put on for us.  
  
The boys were hooting and hollering from up above while she approached the center of the arena. I couldn't help but grin; she looked so tiny down there with that little red water gun in her hands, and the fact alone that she made it this far said that not only was she a force to be reckoned with, but she had something to lose. She had a reason to survive, and that was a weakness. You can't be weak when you're a raider. It just don't work out. But this little vic was ready as rain to bring down the heavens and earth just to see Colter crumble under her feet. I liked that look; it suited her pretty damn well, even if I had to admit something like that to myself.

When Colter came running, she was quick on her feet, dancing around his attacks and dodging bullets like it was second nature. Even the Disciples were having a good go at the fence, shaking it violently while they demanded more blood on the battlefield. This little vic was glad to deliver, because it wasn’t five more seconds before she started firing off little pellets of water at Colter’s armor. Finally, I started to get it. She was tearing it up. Frying the shit out of its circuits. Pack members around me started howling like the damn dogs we were, but I couldn’t bring myself to. I was watching her. She’d found his fucking weakness and she was using it like there was no tomorrow. And when he went down? The whole arena shook as all of the raiders that were in the stands started violently stamping their feet on the ground, roaring for more and begging for someone to die. There she was, ready to deliver, ripping that fucking helmet off of Colter’s head with a smug smile. That smile damn near killed me. The crowd was begging for blood and I could just tell that she was going to deliver.

Colter’s armor started to recharge, but she wasn’t having any of that shit. She started squirting it again and tossed the helmet aside. He couldn’t get up if his armor wasn’t powered up and she knew it. I knew it. We all knew it. He was beat before he could even hit her with a single bullet. Not that he didn’t try; he lifted his pistol a couple of times but she slapped it away like it was nothing. The raiders got a kick out of it when she finally brought her entire foot down on his wrist and we could all hear the crunch of bones breaking. Oh, but she wasn’t finished there. She raised that pretty little bat of hers right over his head… and without even the tiniest bit of hesitation, she swung that thing through the air and brought it down right onto his face, crushing his jaw and breaking out all of his teeth, along with his nose and the middle of his forehead.

She raised that damn bat so high in the air when she turned to the crowd that we could all see his blood sliding down it and staining her hand red. She had won. She had taken the big dog down and she was the boss. She knew it, I knew it, and everyone around us knew it. But the only one to acknowledge it was RedEye up until Gage congratulated her. The noise died down and Nisha – of course it was fucking Nisha – questioned Gage’s decision to hand the park over to her. I just laughed and yelled down, “This girl? You sure, Gage?”

“Hey. We talked about this! She survived the gauntlet. She was smart enough to take my advice, and strong enough to kill Colter. She’s what we need. How about some respect for our new leader, eh?”

Mags snorted and shook her head. “She’ll get respect when she earns respect.”

“Amen,” William chimed, snickering next to her.

But the crowd couldn’t have been happier to see a dead man lying on the floor. They roared to life when she raised the bat again, glaring straight through the fence. Straight at me. But then her gaze was gone, settled on Gage when he spoke to her. I didn’t much like that, but then again, she was supposed to be playing Overboss now. And lord save her if she was too weak to handle herself, because there ain’t room in Nuka World for someone who needs constant protection. There ain’t room for someone that take orders from Porter Gage either, but he’s trying to pull his weight around here and we like the way he manages things. His ideas got us this far; now we just needed to get over those mountains in the distance.

The first day on the job, she went and played catchup with all of the gang leaders. Getting a feel for them, I was guessing. Sent a few men out to watch her while the other gangs toyed with her, and not at all was I surprised to learn that she came out of Nisha’s meat shack looking like she’d shot God himself in the eye with a fucking dart gun. I expected as much from a vic; Nisha was a nasty ass lady with bad habits and an even worse attitude. This little pup probably felt like Nish would peel her skin off right then and there if Gage wasn’t standing guard over her. When my boys reported in from the Parlor, she seemed to have her bearings a bit more about the more… easy pleasing types. But boy, I knew I was gonna have fun with this one. As soon as the gates swung open, I was sitting pretty in my throne with a smirk on my face, waiting for her to come up those steps.

Of course, I had to put one of my guys in his place first; he’d been starting trouble with some of my more close and personal employees, so I had to shake him a little on the mental side. He looked just as scared as he sounded when he talked. “You need help finding your place here?” I asked with a grin. Damn guy was shaking in his boots. Fear wasn’t much a friend to a raider here in Nuka World. He shook his head and tried his best to say no, but I had to add a little on just for good measure. “There’s plenty of collars in the kennels if you can’t.”

When she did, my gut twisted. She looked like she was going ghoul; mutilated skin twisted up one side of her face, convoluting into what looked like burn scars or maybe even something worse. They traveled in a semi-circle around her right eye, not quite dipping into the socket just yet but stretching over it like crescent moon. The rest of it hid in her hair, which was a color of black darker than my very soul and stretched down to her shoulders. But those eyes? Boy, those eyes were grey as iron and they bored into me like bullets. But like I said, you can’t be weak. I didn’t show that I was uncomfortable, because then she’d know that she’d hit a weak spot.

“Now that I’m getting a closer look at you… not sure I’m buying this new Overboss thing,” I said, resting my elbows on my knees so that I could lean my weight forward. She tensed, but she didn’t shy away. Trying to put on a brave face for the bosses, no doubt. Maybe she’d make a fun pawn for us all after all. She didn’t seem like much the more I looked at her. All skin and bone, cheeks a bit gaunter than your regular street-groveling scavver. Poor little vic looked like she hadn’t eaten in days. But the way she straightened out when I said it told me that she wasn’t about to play nice with me.

“I’ll send you my resume and references,” she said with a sneer, resting her hand on the bat.

I wasn’t sure what in the good god damn she was talking about. But just to be sure to assert my dominance over her, I stood from my seat. And god damn, I fucking towered over the vic. I was right before; she couldn’t be more than five feet fucking tall. “The fuck’s a resume…?” But she just snickered, acting all innocent like I knew she would. “Whatever. Don’t matter. Name’s Mason. The Pack Alpha. This here? This is our side of town. You might be the Overboss… for now…, but I’m the boss of the pack, and it’s gonna stay that way. So long as you don’t go forgetting that, we’re gonna be fine.”

She stared at me for a long moment, those haunting eyes burning holes into my soul. Shit, it was like being fired at in the same spots with a gun for the dwindling thirty seconds that it took for her to come up with a response. “So tell me,” she said slowly, glancing around the den, “does your pack play like dogs, or does it play like wolves?”

The question caught me off guard. What kind of thing was that to ask me? Hell if I knew the answer, but she seemed dead set on learning what I had to say about it. “Of course we’re fucking wolves,” I said quickly, glaring at her.

She just tugged on a mile-long smile and crossed her arms. Her guard was down. That was a weakness. I was already starting to dislike this woman. At least until she popped off again. “I should have expected you to be the pack. You smell like animals.”

“Hah,” I said sarcastically, shooting her a glare, “never heard that one before. Look, it ain’t like anyone’s broke up about Colter. Just figured on his replacement bein’ well… different. But Gage says you’re the boss now, so you’re the boss.”

She popped a brow, something that was somewhat annoying at this point. Everything about her was getting to be annoying. Maybe it was just because I didn’t particularly like being stuffed under the rule of some… woman. “You don’t want to be Overboss?” she asked finally, resting a hand on her hip. A hip that somehow fit into tight road leathers. Fucking damn it.

“If I thought the other gangs would go along, yeah, I’d run this place in a heartbeat. Might have to if you turn out to be a turd.” I paused for a short second, and in that second, she brushed a hand through her hair, shooting several quick glances at passing Pack members. “At least it ain’t Mags Black or that freak Nisha. Besides; you can’t possibly be worse than Colter.” Or could she? It seemed to me that she could easily be worse than a lot of people. And this was coming from a raider.

“Colter was weak,” she snapped, shooting me the devil’s eyes. “Why’d you follow him at all?”

I snickered, offering up some sort of peace, if such a thing could exist in Nuka World. Maybe she wouldn’t be so terrible after all. Not if she could show some teeth and backbone… and a little bit of extra kindness towards me and my boys. “Been wonderin’ that ourselves. Don’t get me wrong, Colter was definitely Overboss. Not a man to mess with. And things were good in the beginning; real good. But that was a year ago. Then Colter went soft. Wanted to ‘take stock in what we achieved’.” She was quiet, and I definitely liked having her attention, so I went ahead and let it bake in that head of hers a little. Get a good feel for what I was saying. “Sure, this place beats living in the shitholes we had out there, but it ain’t the palace of caps we signed on for. Ain’t none of us happy, not even the Disciples. And they’re usually a chipper bunch, so long as they’re drenched in blood.” She flinched that time. Oh yeah, I’d struck a nerve by playing at the chords of the group that she hated most so far. Things were going to hell fast, but Gage? Gage had a plan. Brought us together to take down Colter. And here you are.”

“What’s the real story behind Gage and Colter?” she asked.

“Hey, I only know what I heard. Story goes, he talked Colter into being Overboss. And then he got you here. He just likes to pull the strings, not run the show. Maybe he lets things get done without getting dirt on his hands. Ya get what I’m saying here? But hey, I’ll cut to the chase. You gonna do right by the Pack? Word has it that you’ve been talking to the other gangs.”

She snickered softly, something that hit me with some unease. She seemed much more confident now than when she walked in. “Be a good dog and do what you’re told, or you’ll get put down. Simple as that.”

“Woah there, Boss,” I said jokingly, smirking down at her, “not in front of my guys, alright? We’ve got enough problems without a dominance struggle inside the Pack to deal with.” Okay, yeah. I liked her attitude and she seemed easy enough to get along with. But I also liked that she wasn’t afraid to show off her chops to someone like me, especially when I could have squished her like a bug right then and there.

“Struggle? No, no, no struggle,” she replied with that stupid snarky smile. God she knew how to push my buttons. “Every pack has an alpha, I get it. It’s the law of nature. You say you’re wolves, yes? Well… you’re missing an alpha female.” She was smirking like there was no tomorrow, and I myself… well shit, what the hell was I supposed to say to something like that? But before I knew it, she was at the gates and dragging Gage out the door. “I’ll expect you to come and check in with me tonight at the gang meeting, Mason. Don’t keep me waiting.”

Just like that, the damn scavver had found a weakness in me. Fuck, I hated it. She was so smug and so smart, and without so much as blinking, she’d managed to push a couple of buttons. One: surprise. Two: anger. Three:… what the fuck was that third one?


	2. Rule 2: Raiders Don't Dance

After that first meeting, the new Overboss started getting all controlling and shit. Getting us organized and showing us the ropes on how to play nice like good dogs and how she planned on distributing the wealth. That, and she made a whole long list of rules that we were entirely against but had to follow in order to get what we wanted around Nuka World. That’s probably how Mags Black and her weird husband-brother William managed to butter her up enough to get the Galactic Zone and the fucking factory. Then somehow, Nisha made herself behave long enough to manage to get Dry Rock Gulch.

Now let’s jump ahead a few weeks, cuz I’m not about to go into detail about how she managed to wrangle in all three of those parks, all in the names of _other_ gangs.

She was a snippy little shit. Didn’t like doing what she was told, always took her own route through things. Even Gage didn’t like how she took her own path through the shit that we expected her to wade in. If he gave her direction, she didn’t listen to it and fuck knows she didn’t like taking orders from nobody. Nah, she was a one-woman army when it came to getting and doing what she wanted. Didn’t much like it when I went storming up into Fizztop with the intentions of _persuading_ her to give the Pack a taste of the spoils.

When I got up there, she had a cigarette balanced between her lips while she lazily flipped through a copy of that stupid Scav Magazine. Her armor was all gone and she was sitting on one of the tables against the railing, leaning all casual-like against the windowsill as if I couldn’t just push her right off then and there. She looked at me only once, but that was about it. I could hear music from somewhere; my best guess was that she was listening to that Commonwealth radio station. The fuck did she call it… Diamond City Radio? Yeah, that one. It was almost uncomfortable to see her so… well, comfortable. You can’t just be cozy in Nuka World and act like you don’t have a care in the world. I guess not unless you were Holiday.

That’s what she called herself. Said her name was Holly before she dropped out of the Commonwealth to join our crews. Yeah, I could dig the name change. A lot of us tried to change ourselves up to create our new identity. Sort of a way to wipe away who we used to be before we decided that shooting up settlements and robbing traders was the way to go. But Holiday had a lot more skeletons in her closet than the rest of us did, and that’s probably why she was so hip to working jobs for us. We didn’t know why she was so ready to kill or be killed for Nuka World, but far be it from me to complain or ask.

“Tell me, Mason,” she began before I had a chance to speak, “did you leave any family behind before you decided to run in the mud with the dogs?”

I scoffed. What kind of bullshit question was that? “I don’t think that’s any of your fuckin’ business.”

“Have a seat,” she said, motioning to the booth seat at the table. I wasn’t here to be friendly and socialize, but I was willing to humor her to a point. So yeah, I sat down and propped my legs up on the table, just to get comfortable. She took a drag from that cigarette of hers and flicked off the ashes. Looked like some kind of noire poster from before the war. “You know, I had a kid once. And a husband. He got shot though. Son blew up.” Ah. Two of the skeletons out to play. “Kid’s name was Shaun. We adopted him right after I got my degree in law. Fuck, you probably don’t even know what that is. But anyways. He got kidnapped when he was an infant. I was in cryogenic storage. Frozen in a vault. When I thawed out, I spent a year looking for him. Trying to find him so I could take him home. Turns out, he was just another big wig that had to be taken down a notch. So I blew up his facility and everything in it.” I was quiet for a while. There wasn’t a damn reason in the world for me to try and make her feel better; she was shooting at piss in the wind if she thought that it would sway me even a little. But she kept on going after we sat in silence for a while, tossing the magazine on the tabletop near my feet. “I killed my own kid. You know what’s funny? I cried about it for a while, but I don’t feel a single shred of regret. I was nineteen when I married Nate. Nineteen, working on my degree. Twenty-three when we adopted Shaun. So young. Threw my life away just cuz I was so excited to live the American dream. To have a family like everyone else and to make a life for us in the damn suburbs of Massachusetts. Y’know, I like that I ended up frozen. That everything got fucked. Cuz now I have a chance to live the life that I almost lost.”

I sat staring at her for a good while. Nah, I don’t think I could kill my own kid if I had one. More likely scenario was that I’d raise him to be a big alpha like me. Carry on the family legacy. But Holiday settled so easily for killing her kid just so she could have the more ideal life that it was almost disturbing. Maybe she was more like the Disciples than I thought.

“I was so tired of doing the right thing,” she mumbled softly, staring out at the night sky with a sorta longing that I couldn’t quite place. “Tired of defending settlers that couldn’t fight for themselves, of taking bullets for other people when I knew that they could have avoided them. I never did like raiders, Mason. But I damn sure am glad I decided to join them because around here, nobody has to take a bullet for anybody else if it doesn’t suit them.”

With that, she climbed down off the table and sauntered across the room. It was then that I noticed that she hadn’t bothered much in the way of clothes; she was wearing a ratty old t-shirt and a pair of skimpy underwear that just barely crawled up her hips. Were it not for my own magnificent self-control, I’m sure that things would have gone a little different that night. If Gage had come up there to see her like that, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he would have thrown himself at her. But nah, not me. I watched her for a bit, but I made myself get it in my head that asses that nice were a dime a dozen. She started poking around in the bar and poured herself a glass of red wine, looking like she was trying her damnedest to be sophisticated even though we both knew that she was really far from it. No, she was a scav like us, through and through. Nothin’ in the damn world could change that. Not even a fancy glass of wine.

“Do you dance, Mason?” she asked suddenly while she took dainty little sips from the glass in her hand. She was staring at me with those steely eyes, and just as always, it felt suspiciously like being shot right in the chest. Like something hit me there but didn’t quite kill me like it probably should have.

But that question was ludicrous. What the hell did I look like to her? A ballerina? “Of course I don’t fuckin’ dance, woman. What the hell kind of question is that?”

“You do tonight. We can call this an abuse of power; as the Overboss, I demand that you dance with me,” she mumbled. I watched her light another cigarette and take a smooth drag, and damn, it was almost erotic. She looked me over from head to toe and licked those cherry lips and I swear to shit that she was undressing me with her eyes. She’d certainly backed me into a fucking corner. But she was the boss.

“Raiders don’t dance, boss,” I pointed out matter-of-factly. “If you wanna tango or whatever so bad, get your pet to do it. Gage is a sucker for that sappy bullshit.”

“Gage isn’t here,” she replied. Her tone was cold; I didn’t know if I liked it or thought it was a threat of some kind. Maybe both. “If you dance with me, I’ll give you the last two parks and you can have the Red Rocket outside.”

Fuck. This damn woman sure knew how to push my buttons, and don’t get me wrong, it was kinda hot, but I didn’t like her playing that manipulation card. But if that’s what it was gonna take to get her to give me and my boys some territory, so be it, I guess. So I stood, but not without a disappointed groan. She just smirked at me in that way she does and held a hand out, waiting oh-so-patiently for me to take the lead. To what? To that fucking Pip-Boy’s radio. She stood on her tippy-toes when I finally grabbed her fingers and tugged her closer, and those same cherry lips were tugged into that smug smile that I saw in the gauntlet the day she showed up.

If I remembered correctly, the song was one of those smooth jazz ones. Somethin’ about being a good neighbor or doing someone a favor or something like that. Whatever it was, Holliday was loving it. She did most of the moving, I just lifted my arm up when she felt the need to twirl around like a princess. For the most part though, she just swayed her hips all sexy-like and hummed along to the music. Ever so often, she’d take a drag from her cigarette and offer it to me, but I ain’t much of one for smoking, so I turned her down. But damn did she look nice, dancing like that and being all relaxed and whatnot. It was almost confusing to see someone actually enjoying themselves outside of the usual pillaging and ransacking that raiders are so talented at.

I hate to admit this at all, but she looked down right pretty like that. All happy and such enjoying her wine and her smokes without a care in the world. Even the scars on her face didn’t bother me much anymore at that point. When I’d asked her about it, she just mumbled some shit about radiation and some place called Vault 88 where she’d been exposed to pure uranium. She’d started ghoulifying, like really fucking fast, but once she got some radiation treatment from a doctor in Diamond City, the process had halted. She was a half-and-half. Probably another reason she liked hanging around us so much; we weren’t in the business of judgin’ how ugly someone is just cuz of radiation. And as much as it pains me to say it, she seemed like the scars probably made her more attractive than if she didn’t have them. The more I looked, the more they were there, though. Patches of scar tissue ran the length of her right leg and spread across the back of her left arm, decorating her skin all the way up to her panty line and if it were my best guess, a bit further up than that, over the hip.

I was letting this… whatever it was… attraction? I was letting it get the best of me. I looked into her eyes while she danced that night, she looked fucked up. Not in the drunk or drugged out kinda way or the crazy Nisha kinda way, I mean like… sad. Yeah. She looked like at any moment, she could burst out crying. But she did a damn good job of masking it. She’d pulled on a million-dollar smile and was giggling and carrying on, but there was a hurt in her eyes that just didn’t go away. Before I knew it, I was staring at her and she was trying her best to keep the situation in light hands, but shit did she look like she needed this more than she let on. So… I kinda let that tiny shred of sympathy take me out of line.

When the song finally ended and she settled down from her sexy dancing, I asked her all nice and such to turn off the radio. She did it, but only cuz I said ‘please’, some weird shit for a raider to say. That’s probably why she was swayed to do as I asked; Raider’s don’t say please and it probably came off a bit weird. But I was trying my best to be a good guy and help her out in a way that didn’t involve spreading her legs like so many other raider girls did. Most women in Nuka World had turned to sex to work out their issues, and yeah, I get it. Girls get to sleep around just like guys do. But it ain’t healthy to drown your sorrows in jizz, whether you’re a guy or a girl. So once she turned off the radio, I pulled her up close and all and hugged her. And then I started dancing with her like I’d seen Mags and William doing, swaying from side to side with her head on my chest and my arms wrapped around her tiny little waist. She had to tip-toe to reach, but she managed to at least make it that far. A guy doesn’t grow to be almost six and a half feet tall without getting accustomed to a crazy amount of height difference.

It took a lot of effort to keep from stepping on her feet. They were so tiny and easily in the way that every time I had to take a step, I was sure that I’d hear a few toes breaking. But I never did, and I actually thanked whatever God was up in the sky that night for that fact. She seemed to relax a lot, just standing there swaying like we were. Eventually, I could hear her start to hum, though the tune was a bit different and seemed more appropriate for dancing to than that other song had been. I started getting this weird feeling in my stomach. Like it was twisting or something like that. I dunno. At the same time, I felt a bit lighter and the world felt a little bit smaller, like there was only room for two people in it. And at the time, those two people were me and Holiday. It was a weird thought and even a weirder feeling, but I didn’t know if I wanted to complain about it. Holly – Holiday – seemed happy enough. She was swaying a little bit more freely and had a little bounce to her when the 'tempo' picked up, even though she was dancing to her own tune. I even forgot about our deal for the parks until she brought it up again.

“I’ll need some help clearing Safari Adventure,” she said flatly when the tune she was humming was over. I had been so into the moment that I had forgotten what I was there for and wasn’t too keen on bringing up business when I was enjoying myself. It's always incredibly rare for a raider to have some kind of fun outside of killing or fighting or just _raiding_ , and she was ruining my fun. “If you’d send over a couple of guys tomorrow morning, that would be nice.”

Shit… I didn’t really wanna let go; she was really warm and cozy and I was actually enjoying dancing. Even if it really isn’t a raider sort of thing to do. But she wiggled right out of my arms anyways and lit another cigarette, leaving me standing in the middle of the room like an idiot. She’d abandoned her spot so that she could pour herself another glass of wine and climbed up onto the table so she could reclaim her spot on the windowsill, looking out at the stars all over again. She looked like the world had been beautiful again for just a fucking moment, then it was all gone, replaced by that solemn look that told me and everyone that she'd lost everything before she came here. Just like the rest of us had.

I cleared my throat and nodded, crossing my arms over my chest as if it didn’t bother me in the slightest. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll send a couple of the boys out in the morning. Shit, nah, I’ll sweeten the pot. How about I go with ya? Give you the Pack’s quality guarantee. The best of the best.”

She shrugged and sipped from her glass, kicking her feet up with her legs crossed like some sort of sass master up there on the window. Her fingers tapped on the edge of that cup like she was having some sort of nervous tick, but I could tell she was thinking. Measuring her words so she didn’t come off like a bitch, more like. “I… can live with that,” she said slowly, tracing the lip of the jar with her index finger. “I’ll be ready to go at dawn. Will you be up by then?”

“Probably.”

“Then meet me up here at around six or seven. Bring a good weapon though, because we’re in for one hell of a fight.”


End file.
